Taking Back the Reins

Thank you Stratton, for great, accurate ghost-hosting of my little blog. I'm quite proud of it, overall. There was a lot left out, due to my laziness for the most most part. But it met my goal for it which was to put information out there in a supply-driven format that people could consume or not as they chose. This meant that I didn't have to try & figure out who is ultra-interested in all the clinical details, who just wants the facts,ma'am, and those who were mistakenly on my distribution list and are still scratching heads saying Trilby Eileen Who?

I will take a cue from Stratton and be brief. It is 6:30 am and I need to buckle this back up before the natives descend. But friends, I have never been a part of a bigger miracle in my life! I immediately give all major "credit" for this miracle to God first where it belongs- for His so faithfully negotiating the paths ahead of me that in many cases I didn't realize that I was about to miss a turn. Secondly I lay it in the hands of the most incredible Transplant Team in the world- to think that in the beginning Blue Cross thought Dallas would be better! In a later post, when I have made some real progress and have more endurance, I am going to try & get creative- maybe with the help of One Son- I will prepare a little presentation to go here on the blog that names my team members and how they work together, their skill level and my final assurance that I know I am in the right place because they have had so much experience. Things are ALWAYS going to reach out & grab you- the relatively inexperienced will panic and have a "do over". But chances are good that these guys and gals have seen it, chewed on it & solved it. But there is one final factor here, and that is my personal ability to make some records in terms of speed of recovery, etc. that just tickle me pink. For example- and this is what I call "going out when you are on top"- I'm not going anywhere, but I'm writing the last paragraph of this post.

Modestly, I list the following: I sort of kissed the ventilator as I passed by. I had seen people on them- my sweet mother-in-law will stay with me forever, I know. That is a sight I didn't want my children to see, so I didn't give them a chance. Most people are on the vent for about 24 hours, and then they have to be weaned. I went straight to the bottle which was room air plus O-2, but whereas I was on 10-15 liters of O-2 (it brought memories of Rita & Ike along with it, such was the gale!). I felt a bit crowded down in ICU (they have a full house as usual), so I just mosied on to a private room after about 4 days instead of 1-2 weeks. The standard plan to live here with caregivers for 30 days with daily outpatient labs, rehabilitation therapy, etc., has been changed for moving very soon to a brand new facility down towards Hermann Park called Acuity Vision (I THINK). I am still hog-tied by one remaining chest tube (out of 4) and my ever-present Foley to this bed, plus I hallucinated Sunday night under the affects of Atavan, prescribed (of course) by the experts who are allowed to make a mistake occasionally, and I fell. I think this is National Don't Fall Week or some-such, because the team ripped off my beautiful forest green slipper-sox and replaced them with ugly mustard-colored ones, plus they put a band on my wrist 3 times larger than my name band that says "FALL RISK !!!" And of course, they have an armed guard at the door looking in should I attempt to get out of bed without one of the staff present. OK- I really am going to wind this up, but the last point that is being made on these records is that I'm basically an old broad and am running circles around the 40-somethings and 50's. And I wish to publicly acknowledge Santy Runyon, Mr. Bean and Howard Hutchinson, plus many choral directors at places like Southwestern University and Laurel Heights UMC, because the fact that I was a flutist and a singer, in my opinion, just might have given me the last week I needed- because we were that close to the wire. Tuesday night I was thinking that it was hospice time because I could no longer do anything for myself.